News and Current Events - 2017 - 2022

[Jeff Wrangler]

I hadn't seen this March 9th Time Magazine cover, but it still applies,
even though there are only 15 candidates peering in the window and
not 25 like there are now! (And two of those in this window ultimately
decided not to run, Bloomberg and Abrams.)

Kind of fun to look at that and put names to the faces. 

[Paul029]

Historical aquaculture site receives UN World Heritage protection for its Aboriginal cultural importance

Thousands of years ago a volcano in Victoria’s south-west erupted, forming a lava flow eight kilometres wide and 18 kilometres long.  Over many generations an extraordinary freshwater aquaculture system was engineered in this landscape.

Located within the Country of the Gunditjmara, an Aboriginal nation in the southwest of Victoria, the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape includes the Budj Bim Volcano and Tae Rak (Lake Condah), as well as the Kurtonitj component (characterized by wetland swamps), and Tyrendarra (an area of rocky ridges and large marshes) in the south.

The volcanic lava flows, which connect these components, enabled the Gunditjmara to develop one of the largest and oldest aquaculture networks in the world. Composed of a complex system of channels, dams and weirs, they are used to contain floodwaters and create basins to trap, store and harvest the kooyang eel (Anguilla australis), which has provided the population with an economic and social base for six millennia.

The significance of that aquaculture system—created 6600 years ago and in continuous use ever since by the Gunditjmara people—has been recognised by the United Nations following a decades-long campaign by the local Gunditj Mirring Aboriginal Corporation.

The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape has been recognised for its sophisticated aquaculture system that manipulated water flows and ensured eels could be harvested throughout the year. It also highlighted indigenous peoples’ commitment to agriculture, farming and biodiversity.

Placing the area on the United Nations heritage list will challenge the common perception that Australia’s first people were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Instead, the site shows a far more complex Aboriginal economy and lifestyle where people actively intervened in and managed the productivity of the country.

This is the first Australian World Heritage site to be listed exclusively for its Aboriginal cultural values, and the first time an indigenous-led application has been submitted and succeeded globally, hopefully setting a precedent internationally for other groups to follow.


https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1577
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/budj-bim-aboriginal-site-in-western-victoria-added-to-world-heritage-list-20190706-p524sa.html
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jul/07/budj-bim-indigenous-eel-trap-site-added-to-world-heritage-list

[Jeff Wrangler]

As much as I hate to say this, I'm afraid the Fake President was correct when he told those Representatives that they came from a country whose government is "a complete and total catastrophe." Three out of the four of them were born right here in the United States.

[Lyle (Mooska)]

Bravo, Jeff!

[Jeff Wrangler]

As much as I hate to say this, I'm afraid the Fake President was correct when he told those Representatives that they came from a country whose government is "a complete and total catastrophe." Three out of the four of them were born right here in the United States.

Bravo, Jeff!

Thank you, Lyle. That was the first thing I thought of when I heard the quote. 

[Lyle (Mooska)]

^^^

The nightly talk shows have mostly been off in reruns the last two weeks. Stephen Colbert last night came back and just lambasted the President. At one point he showed a clip of the President when he was talking about the 4 Congresswomen mentioned above, talking about them being unhappy and complaining.

Trump (concluding): "But if you're not happy you can leave."

Colbert: Oh shut up. (audience cheers) I'm sorry, my mom told me not to say that. My mom told me not to say that. But, come on! Nobody complains about America more than you do. You cranky old nut lid. Everything in your life has been handed to you on a silver platter and yet, you, every other word out of your mouth is a tantrum that would get a toddler dragged out of a ball pit. You complain about everything. You don't like Bette Midler. Who doesn't like Bette Midler? The Divine Miss M. The wind beneath our wings. If someone is leaving this country it should be you. (audience cheers) And, if you're looking for a new home, might I suggest that you go to hell. (STANDING OVATION.)

The GOP Reacts (And Doesn't) To Trump's Racist Tweets
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEfJvjh_S60

I have noticed lately, not just me, but people around me and people I don't know, are all just feeling, well, just overwhelmed with the news, particularly and obviously about Trump and his administration and the Republican party who is licking his a-hole. People are really beginning to seemingly come to a boiling point. The orange cretin is ratcheting up his idiocy and attacks and I fear we're coming to some kind of boiling point. It's only going to get worse as the election campaign comes more and more into focus.

After I watched Colbert I took a step back and thought about it. Can you imagine at any other time when a network talk show host would come out and show a clip of any president and then say "Oh shut up." And later suggest he "go to hell." And yet it feels so right. Maybe because these shows have been off for the last two weeks, but they do provide a release for what a lot of people are feeling.

That "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore," feelings.

The other night as I was watching some news program about the gargoyle in the White House the reporter started by saying, "There are 495 days left in the Trump administration..." and I felt so overwhelmed with futility. Each second of this administration feels like a root canal and 495 days more sounds like a millennium. And even now because of the inattention to other countries meddling in our elections and the flagrant stupidity of so many voters, who can be sure that will be the end of it? A friend of mine who is from Illinois has been telling me about arguing with some relatives of his who are posting this insane right wing trash online and he's been calling them out on it because he says "I'm not putting up with their stupidity any more."

And I was reading something in the L.A. Times and noticed some Letters to the Editor talking about the piece written about Trump's July 4th speech and I noticed a letter from someone in my city, West Hollywood. This woman wrote:

It is true that Trump is not a good speaker. The point is, my talent is feeling the wonder of a good and kind heart — and Trump has a great heart. He may not be a good speaker, but he loves America.
Elaine Vanoff, West Hollywood

How do you have any hope when you read things like that?

[Jeff Wrangler]

I am no fan of Pennsylvania's Republican Senator Pat Toomey, but even he said that the citizenship of the Squad is as good as his own.

[Jeff Wrangler]

A friend of mine who is from Illinois has been telling me about arguing with some relatives of his who are posting this insane right wing trash online and he's been calling them out on it because he says "I'm not putting up with their stupidity any more."

And I was reading something in the L.A. Times and noticed some Letters to the Editor talking about the piece written about Trump's July 4th speech and I noticed a letter from someone in my city, West Hollywood. This woman wrote:

It is true that Trump is not a good speaker. The point is, my talent is feeling the wonder of a good and kind heart — and Trump has a great heart. He may not be a good speaker, but he loves America.
Elaine Vanoff, West Hollywood

How do you have any hope when you read things like that?

You know I don't. I hope your friend in Illinois feels better for calling out his ignorant relatives that way, but I'm afraid making him feel better is about all the good it's going to do. Those people have Teflon suits. Nothing he says will have any effect on them, and they'll just go on voting for the Cretin-in-Chief.

[Lyle (Mooska)]

Since it's the anniversary of the moon landing on Friday, I'd like to know if any of you have any memories of that and share them here.

[Lyle (Mooska)]

Lindsay Graham is the absolute worst kind of politician. I never cared for this guy or any of his positions, I've always thought he was smarmy, but many thought of him as a politician who had firm convictions and stood up with his own integrity intact, but it's been coming to the forefront more and more that he is a political weasel, bent on the worst kind of political tract: being a moral hypocrite and subjugating himself to this administration.

After Trump's racist tweet and then Graham's supportive unhinged tirade yesterday, and you may remember Graham's unhinged tirade during the Kavanaugh hearing, CNN (Chris Cuomo) had this to say: "What happened to Senator Lindsay Graham? You know, he once called this President "a race baiting xenophobic religious bigot." Look it up. But now this. The Senator swallows every serving. He does nothing but affix himself to the presidential posterior and that comes with an odor. And it will remain."

People are catching on. I personally think Trump has a list of Lindsay Graham's hustler hires and is blackmailing him with it.

[brianr]

"Since it's the anniversary of the moon landing on Friday, I'd like to know if any of you have any memories of that and share them here.'
I remember, I was 25 and it was my 4th year as a teacher. Classes were suspended, many children who had portable TVs at home were driven home by teachers to get them so that every classroom could have a TV. How different from today, no computers nor cellphones. I checked my diary, it was Monday 21st here so I guess Sunday in the USA. I know there was a lot about, and a film made later on how, because of the position of the moon at the time, the signals came back through the satellite dish at Parkes in western NSW.
We have items on our news every night at the moment and they said the computer power used was less than we have in our smart phones today.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Since it's the anniversary of the moon landing on Friday, I'd like to know if any of you have any memories of that and share them here.

I've done some quick research either to confirm or disprove my memories. My source was Wikipedia and other sources to help me work out the date and the times. The Wikipedia article gives times in UTC, so it took some calculating to come up with times that were not stated in military form and were also in Eastern Daylight Time, which was local time for me.

I had turned 11 in May of that year. My memory was that the landing was a Sunday, because my parents and I were visiting my maternal grandparents, which we often did on Sundays, and that we were still at my grandparents' house when the Eagle landed.

These memories are apparently correct. July 20, 1969, was a Sunday. If I have done the math correctly, apparently the Eagle landed at 4:17 p.m. EDT. We would have stayed at my grandparents' home to have "supper" before we returned home.

My memory also is that the day of the landing was the first time in my life that I was permitted to stay up after midnight to watch Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. I may have been allowed to stay up that night, but, again if I have done the math correctly, Armstrong first set foot on the lunar surface at around 11 p.m. EDT. So apparently my memory there is not quite correct.

If I've got the math wrong, please correct it!

Maybe it's age, but I choked up when I read the text of the plaque left behind on the moon: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."

For some reason that is striking me as something like a promise not kept.

(The text should have read "July A.D. 1969.")

[fritzkep]

I was between college and grad school, staying at my parents' place in New Orleans. A friend from college who was doing some summer school work at Tulane was visiting us and stayed over that night. So we saw (or more accurately, heard, and watched the simulations of) the landing on the moon that Sunday afternoon. I remember that my friend and I could hardly contain ourselves, we both stood up at the same time just before the landing, we just couldn't remain sitting down. When they said "the Eagle has landed", we both looked at each other for the longest time and grinned!

We watched the moonwalk that evening, Central Daylight Time, The picture was awful, but just realizing that it was coming all the way from the moon was exciting and compensated for it!

I think we both had trouble getting to sleep Saturday and Sunday nights.

[Lyle (Mooska)]

Thanks Fritz & Jeff!

When you look back at some of the coverage of this event, and when you see what the world was like at that time, it seems even more improbable now that this happened in 1969 than it did at the time.

I was in my hometown of Remsen, NY, that summer and my sister was supposed to have had her baby in mid-June, but that didn't happen. Day after day and then week after week went by and we wondered if she was ever going to have it. We were all more interested in that than the moon landing, heh!  And what would it be? A boy or girl? Seems so ancient that you didn't know if a woman was going to have a boy or a girl. Seems to have taken some of the excitement out of having a child now, don't you think? That's probably why having a "reveal" is so popular and become a replacement for that excitement.

In any case, my sister finally went into labor and then to the hospital. On the early evening of July 19th, while we were watching some coverage of the moon mission on television, the husband called us to say that my sister was doing well and that Jennifer had been born! (My father was actually trying to get my sister to name her Raquel if it was a girl! LOL!) I was 14 then and I was kind of stunned to realize, I guess because it's the 50th Anniversary of the event this year, that at that time my parents were 47 and 42. Only 47 and 42.

The moon walk the next night, July 20th, was anti-climactic. 

We watched the moonwalk that evening, Central Daylight Time, The picture was awful, but just realizing that it was coming all the way from the moon was exciting and compensated for it!

Exactly, heh!

So many things were happening that summer. The Stonewall riots, Chappaquiddick, Manson, Woodstock... The movie of the summer was Easy Rider. (Which I still have never seen!) My family took a rare trip...to Washington D.C.!

[Lyle (Mooska)]

Something you may not know.  The Hollywood Walk of Fame has this star:



Well, it's not a star, it's a moon! And there are 4 of them!

According to the Walk of Fame website:

On the four sidewalk corners at the intersection of Hollywood and Vine, four similar commemorative dedications mark the Apollo XI Mission within moon-like circular plaques. Each plaque contains the names of Commander Neil A. Armstrong, Lunar Module Pilot Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., Command Module Pilot Michael Collins – the astronauts who were aboard the spaceflight that landed the first two people who walked on the Moon. The circular plaques include the date of the first Moon landing 7/20/69, and name of the mission Apollo XI. On the plaques, the moons are in silver and grey terrazzo circles rimmed in brass on a square pink terrazzo background, with the television emblem inlaid at the top of each circle.

“The telecast from the moon was the single most-important live TV broadcast ever!” said Ana Martinez, Producer of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “The bronze markers were set in all four corners of the intersection within the terrazzo sidewalks to represent their reach to the four corners of the world,” Martinez said.

In looking up information, I found a discrepancy. The Official Walk of Fame website (HERE) says the star ceremony was held July 20, 1973. This Los Angeles Times article (HERE) seems to indicate it was January 14, 1993. The Walk of Fame website does have a star ceremony listed for Michael Collins, one of the astronauts of Apollo 11 on the 1993 date. (?)  But they have no separate entries for Armstrong or Aldrin? I'm confused.